Welcome to Case Stories

Case stories is a transdisciplinary project on migration, dying and care. Using oral histories, archival research, stories and art, the aim is to contribute to discussions of social pain at the end of life for migrants by linking marginalised stories. Social pain is the suffering produced by social inequalities, injustice and exclusion. The project includes a digital archive of stories of transnational dying that can be used in teaching.

Image Nadia Bettega

Transnational Dying and Pain

A survivor of a concentration camp pushes away a nasal tube that is delivering her oxygen. The tube brings up traumatic memories. An Indian teacher, dying from cancer, looks back on his life and feels humiliation and hurt at not being able to get a teaching job in the UK and of having to work as a bus driver. His hospice nurse asks ‘What can I say to him that is going to make a difference?'

Case Stories

Tony, a Rastafarian, was nearing the end of his life in an urban hospice. Tony, 'on the basis of his beliefs, had refused conventional cancer treatment such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy’ and ‘was adamant that he did not wish any opiates or western medical painkillers.'